Gelzinis: Top cop ‘confident we have the right person’

Credit: Chitose Suzuki

Boston Polic Commissioner Edward F. Davis speaks with Southie residents during a community meeting at the Tynan School.

Credit: Chitose Suzuki

COMMUNITY SUPPORT: South Boston residents listen during a public safety meeting at Tynan School, yesterday.

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For the second time in 15 months, the gruesome murder of a South Boston woman pulled them out of their homes and into the auditorium of the Tynan School.

Last year they came for Barbara Coyne, a 67-year-old grandmother stabbed to death in her City Point living room, allegedly by a family acquaintance looking for money to buy heroin.

Last night, they flooded the same space with the same shock, fear and anger on their faces. But this time, they came for Amy Lord, a 24-year-old digital marketing specialist who grew up in Wilbraham and moved to Southie just 10 months ago, and was abducted and murdered as she left her apartment building early in the morning.

Their congressman, Steve Lynch, looked out on the throng of more than 1,500 who packed the floor and balcony, spilled out into the street and tied old and new Southie together.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in South Boston for 50 years, or moved in yesterday,” Lynch told a crowd who appeared a perfect blend of Townies and Toonies, “you are a part of this community.”

Last year, old Southie served up a local junkie in less than an hour in connection with Barbara Coyne’s murder. Last night, what everyone came for — old and new — was to hear the Boston police commissioner and the Suffolk district attorney say the perpetrator of this latest evil was in custody.

Both Ed Davis and Dan Conley essentially said that, without specifically saying that. In other words, all the necessary forensic i’s have yet to be dotted and the t’s crossed.

“We are in the right place,” Davis, referring to the progress of the investigation, assured the crowd, “and we are confident we have the right person.”

Being a lawyer, Dan Conley was a bit more circumspect but no less encouraging. He told the solemn crowd his team was hard at work on building a “powerful and compelling case.”

Conley kept connecting those words — “powerful and compelling” — to Edwin Alemany. He said that, based on the strength and eyewitness accounts of Alemany’s two alleged attacks on women before and after Lord’s murder, “Edwin Alemany no longer poses any threat to the citizens of South Boston.”

People cheered, but not for long. When it was time for questions, the first woman out of the box broadsided Davis with a question about why her efforts to phone in information about blatant drug dealing and breaking-and-entering on her street were not met by proper responses from the police.

Davis provided the woman with his number and guaranteed that the oversight would not happen again.

Jeanette Smisky and Heather Melander came because they could have been Amy Lord. “We both leave our apartments at the same time in morning to go to the gym before work,” Jeanette said.

“I came,” Heather added, “hoping to hear that they got the guy for sure.”